User blog:RRabbit42/More categories than content
It looks like I will be spearheading the effort to get this wiki cleaned up. One of the problems here is many pages have more categories than content. For example, a page for Darth Vader might read "Darth Vader is the main antagonist of Star Wars" with 87 categories, and that's it. I've seen this happen on other wikis. The problem is this doesn't help. It creates so much clutter that the categories themselves become useless. But more than that, the categories are used as an excuse not to say anything about the character. Why bother saying how someone is arrogant if all you have to do is slap an "Arrogant" category on the page? Why bother saying who a character brainwashed, the manner they used and the purpose for doing it if all you have to do is slap a "Brainwashers" category on the page? Pages for characters are a way of getting to know them. If you were meeting someone in real life and you said to them, "Tell me about yourself", what would you think if all they said was "Human, Man, Athlete, Book Reader, Brown Eyes, Muscled"? An answer like that doesn't really tell me anything about the person. It's jargon. It's factoids. It's words with no meaning behind them. What if you decide to tell your friend about him? "Hey, Susan. I just met this guy yesterday. He's an athlete and he reads books." "Oh, yeah? What sport does he play?" she asks. "I don't know. He didn't say." "Well, what kind of books does he read?" "He didn't say." "How do you know he plays sports or reads books? Did he show you anything that proves it?" "Um, no, I guess he didn't." "So you don't really know if either of those are true." So what kind of meaning could we put behind those words and provide proof that they're true? Let's take "Athlete". What sport does he play? Is it basketball, baseball, soccer, volleyball, darts, swimming, weightlifting or a marathon runner? Is it some combination of those like a triathlon? Is he a professional athlete, a college athlete or an amateur? Is he part of a league or does he just shoot hoops on weekends with his friends? Is he any good at them? Are there athletes he looks up to and tries to learn from? Does he have pictures or other memorabilia about those athletes? Now let's take "Book Reader". Are those books sci-fi, horror, romance, fantasy, fiction or non-fiction? Are they related to the sports he participates in? Are they books on statistics and techniques so he can learn how to play his sports better? Does he prefer paperbacks, hardbacks or e-books? Does he take them with him and read them in a park? Are they books for a class he's taking? Does he curl up in a chair, covered in a blanket with a cup of tea nearby when he reads? Is he part of a program that reads to children at schools or libraries? That's the sort of thing that's been missing from the pages. The details that make a character a person and not just a list. Let's get back to actually saying things about characters. Add the sentences that prove the categories fit. Add the information so that people who aren't familiar with a story are true. Let's get back to using categories to organize pages instead of as an excuse not to say anything. Category:Community News Category:Blog posts